Putin hails Syria 'cooperation', eyes business deals in Iran visit
Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Iran's leadership on Wednesday in Tehran, where the two staunch allies of Syria's regime discussed pushing a peace deal in the war-torn country and boosting business ties.
The visit to Iran, Putin's first since 2015, comes as Moscow seeks to turn its game-changing military intervention in Syria's war into a concerted push to end fighting with the help of Iran, Bashar al-Assad's other key backer.
"We are working very productively with Iran and we manage to coordinate our positions on Syria," Putin said after talks with Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani and the Islamic republic's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The Russian leader insisted that thanks to a joint push with rebel supporter Turkey, "the situation on the ground in the fight against terrorism and the negotiating process are developing very positively".
Khamenei said the "good cooperation between Tehran and Moscow in Syria shows that the two countries can realise their objectives even in difficult terrain", and insisted that all solutions to the conflict come "from inside the country".
Russia, Iran and Turkey pledged after a latest round of negotiations in Kazakhstan on Tuesday to bring the Syrian regime and its opponents together for a "congress" to push peace efforts in the Russian city of Sochi on November 18.
The three key players have organised a series of peace talks in the Kazakh capital Astana this year, agreeing on the establishment of "de-escalation" zones in various parts of the war-torn country.
Business deals
Putin's visit, which included a three-way summit with Rouhani and the leader of ex- Soviet Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev – comes following recent tensions over the 2015 nuclear deal after US President Donald Trump refused to certify the agreement last month.
The Russian president's arrival came a day after the US Treasury added 40 Iranian individuals and entities already targeted by sanctions to a counter-terrorism blacklist, but Russian companies are still looking to take advantage of business opportunities the nuclear deal presented.
State oil giant Rosneft and the National Iranian Oil Company signed a roadmap agreement with an eye to developing joint projects worth up to $30 billion, Rosneft head Igor Sechin was quoting as saying by Russian news agencies.
Sechin said the two sides were looking to seal binding deals within a year to work on a "whole series of fields, oil and gas", and that eventual output could total 55 million tonnes of oil a year.
The potentially mammoth deal would boost Rosneft's push in the Middle East and aid the Kremlin's ambitions of bolstering its influence in Iran and the broader region.
Moscow and Tehran have had close political and economic relations, and in the nuclear field Russia has already built one reactor at Iran's Bushehr plant and just started work on two new ones.